MERCURY [ A SMALL PLANET ]

Mercury is the smallest telluric planet (ie a rocky planet) in the Solar System. It is also closest to the Sun and has virtually no atmosphere. As a result, it experiences large temperature differences, unparalleled in the Solar System. This temperature can reach about + 430 ° C during the day, and go down to -180 ° C at night. Its surface riddled with craters recalls in many ways the lunar surface. Desert of rocks and lava sometimes hot, sometimes frozen, Mercury is a star geologically dead, that is to say without internal activity, for more than 3 billion years.